The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu,

By Joshua Hammer

Part travelogue, part intellectual history, part geopolitical tract and part thriller, Hammer tells the remarkable story of the librarian who oversaw a plot to smuggle ancient manuscripts out of Timbuktu, Mali, in an effort to save them from war.

Bucky F*&ing Dent

By David Duchovny

Set in 1970s New York amid one of baseball’s most famous pennant races, the “X-Files” star’s second novel traces a rite of passage: a son coming to grips with a distant father who has only a few months to live.

End of Watch

By Stephen King

The finale to the trilogy that began with “Mr. Mercedes,” this grimly entertaining tale follows the diabolical machinations of a villain thought to be in a vegetative state but who is in fact masterminding a fiendish plan to fool people into killing themselves. Can he be stopped?

Evicted

By Matthew Desmond

An extraordinary feat of reporting and ethnography, Desmond has made it impossible to again consider poverty in America without tackling the central role of housing — and the demise of opportunity and of hope that occurs when people are forced to leave their homes.

The Firebrand and the First Lady

By Patricia Bell-Scott

A fascinating portrait of the unusual friendship between Eleanor Roosevelt and a young black activist named Pauli Murray, who went on to become an influential lawyer, Episcopal minister, writer and co-founder of the National Organization for Women.

Fixers

By Michael M. Thomas

Thomas, a former partner at Lehman Brothers, spins an audacious financial thriller based on real-life events — the 2008 financial crisis — that features cameos by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The novel juxtaposes the ideals of loyalty, service, patriotism and noblesse oblige against the venality of contemporary Wall Street.

A Hero of France

By Alan Furst

In his 14th novel, Furst captures the dangers and intrigue of the French Resistance in Nazi-occupied Paris. Showcasing Furst’s perfect pacing, eloquent prose style and meticulous research, the book is a masterly tale of espionage and historical fiction.

The Highest Glass Ceiling

By Ellen Fitzpatrick

Before Hillary, there were Victoria, Margaret and Shirley. The presidential campaigns of Victoria Woodhull, Margaret Chase Smith and Shirley Chisholm hail from another era — but has much really changed?

Lab Girl

By Hope Jahren

The story of a girl who becomes a scientist, the book is also the story of a career and the endless struggles over funding, recognition and politics that get in the way. It is also really the story of two lab partners and their uncommon bond.

Modern Lovers

By Emma Straub

Like her 2014 novel “The Vacationers,” Straub’s witty book has a warm-weather vibe, even if it is set in the less idyllic, if beautifully gentrified, Brooklyn. Here a group of friends from college, now nearing 50, are forced to take a hard look at their relationships.

The Nest

By Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney

Just before the Plumb siblings are about to cash in the trust fund that will solve all their problems, they discover it’s been almost completely depleted. A comic novel about familiar greed and affection.

One in a Billion

By Mark Johnson and Kathleen Gallagher

A riveting account of a medical team’s frantic search for the genetic error threatening a little boy’s life. What they found proved that it was possible to use a person’s genes to diagnose and treat a previously unknown disease and helped usher in the use of genome sequencing for people with unusual disorders.

The Summer Before the War

By Helen Simonson

Anglophiles mourning the end of “Downton Abbey” will find solace in this novel that begins in pre-World War I England and deftly observes the effect of war on the staid Edwardian sensibilities of the coastal village of Rye.

The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones

By Rich Cohen

Rich Cohen approaches the Stones from two perspectives — as the kid discovering the group from glorious sounds emerging from his older brother’s room and a young magazine writer, backstage as he works his way into the good graces of the aging rockers.

Switched On

By John Elder Robison

Robison, who has Asperger’s syndrome, chronicles his rich emotional life following a scientific experiment on his brain. Exhilarated but chastened, Robison delivers an account that is both poignant and scientifically important.

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

By Helen Oyeyemi

A series of loosely connected, magically tinged tales about personal and social justice. Built around the idea of keys, locks and magic doors, the stories cover a wide territory — from mythology and fairy tales to smartphones and YouTube stars.

When Breath Becomes Air

By Paul Kalanithi

Written by a young neurosurgeon as he faced a terminal cancer diagnosis, this memoir is inherently sad. Still, this moving and thoughtful tale of family, medicine and literature is well worth the emotional investment.

Wilde Lake

By Laura Lippman

A new case dredges up painful memories for Luisa (Lu) Brant, the new state’s attorney of Howard County, Maryland. In what feels like Lippman’s most personal novel, the book is as much a legal drama as it is tale of childhood and family life.

The Year of the Runaways

By Sunjeev Sahota

“The Year of the Runaways” is essentially “The Grapes of Wrath” for the 21st century. By following a handful of young Indian men in England, Sahota has captured the plight of millions of desperate people struggling to find work, to eke out some semblance of a decent life in a world increasingly closed-fisted and mean.